89' McKinley Explorer passenger cars

[rbryce1]

Hey Mr. Bach-Man

I have already purchased all of the McKinley Explorer (new series 89' cars with the names Talkeetna, Chena, Nenana and Eklutna) which come with lighted interiors.  I would like to have the rest of the series, which contains 3 cars, Kenia, Kobok and Knik (all of the cars in this line are named for Alaska rivers), but they do not come with interior lights, and they look odd when coupled with the lit cars, sort of like they are broken!  Seems Bachmann only used these 3 cars in the train you purchase as a set, and did not see fit to light these three cars, most likely to keep the price of the train set down.  

It looks to me like you can swap the shells on these cars with very little difficulty, but I would like to be sure that all you need to do is pop out the locking tabs in the vicinity of the trucks to remove the shells from the base.  I could then create lighted versions of these 3 cars for my set and actually offer 3 more unlit cars to someone with the unlit train.

[rbryce1]

I was able to swap the shells on the two cars last night and by doing so have added an interior lit version of the Kenai car to my set and created a non-lit version of the Chena car for someone else's set.  Seems the shell on these particular cars are spot glued in 8 locations with a microspot of glue instead of using snap tabs.  The glue seperates extremely easily and the frames were identical and interchangable.  To do this though, the frames and shells are not interchangable betwen the "A" and "B" series cars, only within the same series of car.